FT Essential Guide to Writing a Business Plan

Appendix A: Deriving competitive position

“All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.”

Edward Gibbon

In this appendix

• Customer purchasing criteria
• Key success factors
• Rating performance for competitive position

In this appendix, you will assess how your firm measures up to the competition. You will conclude what your competitive position is, both now and over the next few years. And you will do this for each of your main business segments.

This appendix sets out a systematic way of deriving competitive position, as opposed to the short-cut listing of your firm’s strengths and weaknesses discussed in Chapter 5.

You will go through three stages, for each of your firm’s main segments:

1. Identify and weight customer purchasing criteria ...